S.W. Laro

JOSHUA LIMBO is a Two-Man Two Act play currently in pre-production for NY stage at LaMaMa. A white man and black man confront each other's racism in a desert shack as two rattlesnakes bare witness to the violence.

DELCINA'S TREE is an epic novel about a Jamaican tree witch able to conjure the tree of life for those who are dying. Based on woman who helped raise Mr. Laro as a boy in the 1970s, the novel employs authentic Jamaican 'patois' for dialog offering readers a thorough journey into the life of Ms. Delcina Brown. 

THE BLARNEY BOYS is a brutal n' darkly humorous tale of three Hell's Kitchen drunks and a Jesuit priest taking a road trip to find buried money in the Vermont woods. Loosely based on actual men Mr. Laro knew in NYC in the 1980s the tale demonstrates his unique style of dialog to bring his characters to life off the page. Like Delcina's Tree, the use of phonetic verbiage is unlike most writers today who write status quo dialog with little potency. 

LITTLE JACK'S GARDEN  was a tribute novel written to honor the Lakota people of South Dakota on the Pine Ridge reservation. The harsh and heartfelt story tracks the lives of an indian named 'Little Jack' and a young girl he helped raise 'Abigail.' When Little Jack is put into an asylum when she is a girl years later as a college student she finds him languishing there and takes him out of the asylum on a road trip back to the Rez. 

The new script of this play is now available on Amazon Books  so check it out!

'NIGHT RABBIT' is S.W. Laro's dark look into drug/sexual addiction. Laro says, 'in a society where people are trapped in the cycle of 'ingestion' vs. outward displays of selflessness towards others and culture itself, the play exposes the hypocrisy of those patterns.' 

Seeing the struggle America has in dealing with addiction, the play offers no solutions and serves only as a 'caution.'  'I had my own bouts of addiction in my life and I understand the games and lies addicts exist in so to control others and demean their own lives. Problem is, mankind has been 'getting high' since before the Sumerians and is part of the human condition. But when one's own fetish becomes society's obligation to deal with THAT fetish is no longer a private choice and becomes an invasive costly healthcare issue.' 

The lovers in the play, Henry & Emma, are trapped within two kinds of addiction: the sub/dom or s&m lifestyle and their own substance abuse. Beyond addiction, the theme of play is also the co-dependence/narcissistic personas people seek out in each other to relive childhood traumas. Co-dependence as well as narcissism are also addictions; and like any substance abuse are choices of behavior adults make to survive. However, that survival comes at a high price for one creates chaos and pain in others in manipulative ways that oft'times leaves the players more broken and toxic.

'I have no judgement about addiction,' says Laro. 'But let's ask the nasty question: why do addicts deserve to be overly loved and given compassion? Addicts are people who have neither love or compassion for themselves or anybody else - it's all about them always. 'The Night Rabbit' does not suggest a final verdict for either Henry or Emma. They don't deserve our sympathy or respect for self-inflicted wounds. But we as readers/audience can feel 'mirrored' by their plight while not feeling sorry for them as a couple.

'Ultimately, writing this piece was about showing in a disturbing way how a couple can work out childhood pain through their partners in cruel destructive ways when the path forward to real love should have been the opposite - kindness and acceptance and a desire to admit fault. But for narcissists and co-dependents seeing the truth of their own negative souls doesn't happen until it's too late. The relationship implodes and it's THEN that both people must deconstruct the puzzles of their lives and rearrange the pieces for a brand new final image.'

WARNING - the dialog in this play is explicit as is the sexuality. Both, used to portray the degradations of substance abuse as a choice NOT a disease.

swl

https://www.amazon.com/Bone-Watchers-s-w-laro/dp/B0BB626P27/ref=sr_1_3?crid=217XX4CR1FKKG&keywords=s.w.+laro&qid=1692899368&s=books&sprefix=s.w.+laro%2Cstripbooks%2C99&sr=1-3  THE BONE WATCHERS available on Amazon Books now!